Practical Vedanta

Practical Vedantanoumenon and phenomenon. There is the phenomenal world, the universe ofcontinuous change, and there is something behind which does not change; and thisduality of existence, noumenon and phenomenon, some hold, is true, and otherswith better reason claim that you have no right to admit the two, for what we see,feel, and think is only the phenomenon. You have no right to assert there isanything beyond phenomenon; and there is no answer to this. The only answer weget is from the monistic theory of the Vedanta. It is true that only one exists, andthat one is either phenomenon or noumenon. It is not true that there are two —something changing, and, in and through that, something which does not change;but it is the one and the same thing which appears as changing, and which is inreality unchangeable. We have come to think of the body, and mind, and soul asmany, but really there is only one; and that one is appearing in all these variousforms. Take the well-known illustration of the monists, the rope appearing as thesnake. Some people, in the dark or through some other cause, mistake the rope forthe snake, but when knowledge comes, the snake vanishes and it is found to be arope. By this illustration we see that when the snake exists in the mind, the ropehas vanished, and when the rope exists, the snake has gone. When we seephenomenon, and phenomenon only, around us, the noumenon has vanished, butwhen we see the noumenon, the unchangeable, it naturally follows that thephenomenon has vanished. Now, we understand better the position of both therealist and the idealist. The realist sees the phenomenon only, and the idealistlooks to the noumenon. For the idealist, the really genuine idealist, who has trulyarrived at the power of perception, whereby he can get away from all ideas ofchange, for him the changeful universe has vanished, and he has the right to say itis all delusion, there is no change. The realist at the same time looks at thechangeful. For him the unchangeable has vanished, and he has a right to say this isall real.What is the outcome of this philosophy? It is that the idea of Personal God is notsufficient. We have to get to something higher, to the Impersonal idea. It is theonly logical step that we can take. Not that the personal idea would be destroyedby that, not that we supply proof that the Personal God does not exist, but we mustgo to the Impersonal for the explanation of the personal, for the Impersonal is amuch higher generalization than the personal. The Impersonal only can be Infinite,the personal is limited. Thus we preserve the personal and do not destroy it. Oftenthe doubt comes to us that if we arrive at the idea of the Impersonal God, thepersonal will be destroyed, if we arrive at the idea of the Impersonal man, thepersonal will be lost. But the Vedantic idea is not the destruction of the individual,but its real preservation. We cannot prove the individual by any other means butby referring to the universal, by proving that this individual is really the universal.If we think of the individual as separate from everything else in the universe, itcannot stand a minute. Such a thing never existed.Secondly, by the application of the second principle, that the explanation ofeverything must come out of the nature of the thing, we are led to a still bolderfile:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Chitra%20Selva...oksBySwami/PracticalVedanta/PracticalVedantaPDF.html (25 of 113)2/26/2007 12:24:33 AM